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Prior to the terror-filled times of the Long War–the seemingly endless struggle against the Undine, a paranoid, shape-shifting race once known only as Species 8472–enemy sleeper agents quietly penetrated every echelon of Federation society, as well as other starfaring civilizations throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The ensuing conflict shook humanity to its very core, often placing its highest ideals against a pure survival instinct. All too frequently, the Undine War demanded the harshest of sacrifices and exacted the steepest of personal costs from the countless millions whose lives the great interdimensional clash forever altered.

Drawn from his exhaustive research and interviews, The Needs of the Many delivers a glimpse of Betar Prize–winning author Jake Sisko's comprehensive "living history" of this tumultuous era. With collaborator Michael A. Martin, Sisko illuminates an often-poorly-understood time, an age marked indelibly by both fear and courage–not to mention the willingness of multitudes of unsung heroes who became the living embodiment of the ancient Vulcan philosopher Surak's famous axiom, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few".

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This is a discussion thread so spoilers are permitted. You have been warned.

^ The novel is a series of interviews with Starfleet Officers and persons who participated in the Undine (Species 8472) War. In the opening chapter Jake says he is completing this Project at the request of the Federation Department of Peace and that it's an historical project, not a work of fiction.

Yes, we know the book presents itself that way. The suggestion is that maybe, in the TrekLit universe, Jake Sisko wrote this as a work of fiction and presented it as an epistolary work in which he interviewed the participants in an alternate history -- just as Bram Stoker wrote Dracula as a collection of journals, interviews, and articles even though it was actually fictional.

Yes, we know the book presents itself that way. The suggestion is that maybe, in the TrekLit universe, Jake Sisko wrote this as a work of fiction and presented it as an epistolary work in which he interviewed the participants in an alternate history -- just as Bram Stoker wrote Dracula as a collection of journals, interviews, and articles even though it was actually fictional.

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It's actually a nice little idea, which reconciles STO with Trek Lit

Nice to see that I'm not the only one coming up with these ideas (yeah, I'm referring to my STO thread on this board..)

Yes, we know the book presents itself that way. The suggestion is that maybe, in the TrekLit universe, Jake Sisko wrote this as a work of fiction and presented it as an epistolary work in which he interviewed the participants in an alternate history -- just as Bram Stoker wrote Dracula as a collection of journals, interviews, and articles even though it was actually fictional.

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I suppose it's possible. Then again we do have multiple timelines going on in the Trek universe now. Who's to say that its not entirely true to its particular universe?

Personally I don't think there should be an attempt to reconcile the two timelines. We have the Prime Universe, we have the Abrams Universe, there were millions of Enterprise-Ds in Parallels. Leave them be.

I'm with nx here. Personally, I think it's actually alot less confusing to just leave things as separate universes than it is to try to reconcile everything. IMO that can get kinda ridiculous as more and more crazy excuses are intrduced to try to explain away every little inconstancy.

I got this book today and the person who wrote this should be shot execution style. While I understand the reasoning behind it, there's no reason why it has to be in a transcript style. The interviews could have been done in other ways.